Portable media devices are generally relatively small devices having internal memory for storing files. Many of these devices are flash memory devices, while others utilize physically small hard drives. They can be extremely convenient for users because of their relatively large storage capacity given their relatively small size. Due to their generally small sizes, they are frequently used for transferring files from one location to another and often used to plug into devices such as digital cameras and portable music players. They may also be connected to a computing device, such as a personal computer or laptop computer, to copy files between the two computing device and the portable media device. Some of these devices have interface hardware that is unique to the given device. Typically such devices will plug into a slot designed to accommodate their particular shape and size. Other devices may use a more universal connection such as universal serial bus (USB) or firewire. There are many types of these devices currently available on the market, some examples of which include XD, secure digital (SD), MultiMedia cards (MMC), PCMCIA, compact flash (CF), memory sticks, portable hard drives, and USB flash drives.
Portable media devices have become extremely popular due to their increasingly larger capacities and their decreasingly smaller sizes. They are an effective mode of transportation for files such as music, picture, and work related files. Despite the abundance of these devices used every day and their portability, a user currently must rely on a computer to transfer files from one of these devices to another. Therefore, the extent of the portability of these devices is limited by the fact that file transfer between devices cannot take place on the go. Furthermore, user interaction is required to select files to transfer from one device to another. This can be time consuming and tedious when the user only wants a certain type of file transferred and there are a large number of files and/or directories to traverse through because the user must go through each folder and select each file one by one.
There are currently portable media device readers that allow a user to copy files from a portable media device to a more sophisticated device, such as a portable digital music player. Devices such as these, however, only provide one-way copying of files from the portable media device to the more sophisticated device. These devices do not permit the copying of files in the reverse direction and do not permit files to be copied between two or more portable media devices. In addition, current devices only perform strict copying from the portable media device to the more sophisticated device. If a user does not want all of the files transferred, then they are forced to later delete any files that were transferred that they did not want on the more sophisticated device.